“Dr Cuozzo's conclusions are that Neanderthals, the brutish 'cavemen' depicted in movies and textbooks, were post-Flood (Noah's Flood) humans”.
I have only very recently become aware of the extensive research on Neanderthal skulls by US orthodontist, Dr. Jack Cuozzo, and the important conclusions that he has reached.
One writer who has given Cuozzo’s findings some positive airing is Creationist researcher and speaker, Anne Habermehl, whose bombshell article on Babel and the geography of early Genesis I had cause to draw attention to in my:
Tightening the Geography and Archaeology for Early Genesis
has explained that Cuozzo’s radical conclusions are not the mainstream Creationist view:
The Root of the Disagreement: Cuozzo versus Lubenow
Currently, the most widely accepted creationist view of the Neanderthals is that they were very early nomadic humans, probably one of the tribes that departed from Babel in the dispersion (for example, Oard 2003b, Robertson and Sarfati 2003). Their unique skull characteristics were possibly the result of family genetic traits and/or poor diet and lack of sunshine during the Ice Age, or perhaps disease. This is essentially the view of the Neanderthals that is described by Marvin Lubenow in his influential book, Bones of Contention (Lubenow 2004), as well as in various articles (for example, Lubenow 1998, 2000, 2006, 2007).
Lubenow, theologian and anthropologist, had been studying fossils for many years and his conclusions seemed solid enough; creationist writers have been quite willing to subscribe to his ideas (for example, Oard 2009; Parker 2006; Purdom 2007).
But creationists were not totally unanimous in following the party line on Neanderthals. Maverick Jack Cuozzo, an orthodontist, had been studying Neanderthal skulls, and had authored some papers (for example, Cuozzo 1987, 1991, 1994). He then published his scientific research in a book on Neanderthals, Buried Alive! (Cuozzo 1998a); and presented a paper on computer projections of human skull changes with age at the International Conference on Creationism that same year (Cuozzo 1998b).
Cuozzo’s work represented a new research concept with regard to the scientific methods used in the study of ancient fossils. Whereas everybody else merely examined the Neanderthal skulls as they were at a point in time, Cuozzo looked at the skulls (using X-rays) as changing continuously from the moment of birth right on through to death. He had come to some radical conclusions: Neanderthals were ancient people who had developed their unique morphological characteristics (appearance) because they lived to an age of several hundred years, and, in addition, they had matured to adulthood very slowly. The significance of Cuozzo’s work did not appear to sink in among creationists, who have largely ignored his ideas.1 Creationists who have taken heed include Beasley (1992), Murdock (2004), and Robbins (2009).
Although most creationists currently accept the Lubenow view of Neanderthals, they admit that there are questions that remain. Where did the Neanderthals come from and where did they go? Why did they look as they did? Why did Neanderthals and modern humans appear to live side by side for long periods (or did they)? Why were Neanderthals buried with modern humans? Why did the robust Neanderthals disappear so suddenly? Do we carry any of their DNA or did their line go extinct? Why did young Neanderthals not have browridges? Where did the Neanderthals fit into biblical history? Were Neanderthals one of the groups dispersed from Babel? And where did Homo erectus fit into the picture?
Indeed, accepting H. erectus as human, as the majority of creationists do now, was a concept that raised its own set of questions. Where did H. erectus fit into biblical history? Where did H. erectus come from and where did he go? Do we carry H. erectus genes? Was there really a wide diversity of human genes immediately post Flood? If so, how did this diversity happen so soon after the human genetic bottleneck of the Ark? Should there not have been less diversity immediately after the Flood, with diversity increasing as time went on? How did H. erectus relate to the Neanderthals? Why are there no H. erectus burials (Homo erectus 2009b)?
Creationists as a whole did not seem to have answers for all these questions.
[End of quote]
Pat Franklin, who has enthusiastically accepted the views of Dr. Cuozzo, has written the following, sometimes quite dramatic, review of Cuozzo’s controversial book, Buried Alive
Neanderthals - the amazing truth is in the teeth, reveals American orthodontist. by Pat Franklin
16/01/2012
American orthodontist Dr Jack Cuozzo has revealed the astonishing truth about ancient man. Few scientists are ever allowed access to original skulls, but have to make do with replicas on display in museums. Dr Cuozzo saw the real thing, x-rayed Neanderthal skulls in Europe, and found out the truth - and the lies about man's 'evolution'.
His book, 'Buried Alive,' * tells the tale of how he took his family (wife and five children) to Europe along with special x-ray equipment. He was allowed access to original fossils and was shocked to find that Neanderthal fossils had in some cases been altered, bones put together in the wrong way, and sometimes measured inaccurately to give a false impression. These findings put Dr Cuozzo and his family in some danger, and at one time they were fleeing across France and trying to get away from two cars which began tailing them.
In a motel they had to barricade their doors to stop intruders. Dr Cuozzo hid the x-rays in a comic book carried by one of his children, while himself carrying a packet labelled as x-rays, just in case they were confiscated at the airport. They were all very relieved to get back on American soil.
That was in 1979, when creationists were just beginning to really get to grips with evolution versus truth. So what was so important about x-rays of old bones that sinister men began chasing a dentist and his family around France?
One of the first skulls x-rayed was a Neanderthal child, apelike of course. But Dr Cuozzo found that the lower jaw was out of alignment. As an orthodontist, he could see exactly how the teeth fit together and how the jaw should be correctly positioned, and when it was, the skull was not apelike at all!
Another skull was the same - appearing apelike until he put the jaw into correct alignment, with the wear on the teeth matching perfectly.
He was astonished to see that a fragment of another skull was being altered, with the chin being removed to make it appear more apelike. The picture of that is also in the book, along with the original skull as it looked when it was dug up, chin intact.
Later he looked at another famous skull, this time in Germany – a 'teenage Neanderthal.' He found once again that the replica skull on display was made to look apelike, but a color slide purchased at the museum showed that the lower jaw was dislocated, positioned 30mm out of its socket! This brought the upper jaw 30mm forward, looking more like a muzzle, and very apelike.
Other Neanderthal fossils in museums had been scrubbed clean of red ochre, which was smeared on the skin as a burial custom across Europe and the Middle East, much as corpses now are made up by morticians to look more lifelike. As the Neanderthal rotted in the ground, the red ochre would get on the bones and teeth. This would have been a clear indicator that Neanderthals were human, with established burial techniques, and that would have been against evolutionary philosophy. Therefore, the red ochre was washed off, and not mentioned in scientific journals. But Dr Cuozzo's equipment examined the inside of the skulls as well as the outside, and there the red ochre was clearly visible.
On one trip he and his family also found a cave which had been taken off the official list of ancient sites open to the public in southern France, where the Neanderthal caves are tourist attractions. He reasoned that if the cave was off limits, it might contain something which did not fit in with evolutionist teaching.
They finally found the cave of Bernifal, which was partly blocked off and had no lights. They had four flashlights with them, and took flash pictures of all they could before a Frenchman arrived and chased them out. Their pictures show a cave carving of a dinosaur butting heads with a mammoth! Dinosaurs are supposed to have died out 65 million years ago, long before mammoths supposedly 'evolved'. So no wonder the cave was shut. The picture is in his book.
Dr Cuozzo's conclusions are that Neanderthals, the brutish 'cavemen' depicted in movies and textbooks, were post-Flood (Noah's Flood) humans. They lived much longer than we do, and matured much more slowly. They had better teeth and bones and a larger brain. They were not brutish or arthritic, did not have rickets or syphilis, and he suspects that their eyes were also superior to ours, possibly with functions we have lost.
His thoughts about their eyesight are extrapolated from seeing their caves. The walls in some cases were white crystalline structures when they were discovered with their cave paintings, but they have become discolored since artificial lighting was put up for tourists. If they were in use by Neanderthals, and not smoke damaged then, how could those ancient people see to paint the cave walls? He wonders if they had eyes which could see in the dark, a function we may have lost, but will possibly regain when the Lord restores the world.
'Buried Alive' is a fascinating book, chilling in its revelations of how dangerous it can be to fall foul of the establishment. There is a lot of money and power tied up with evolution philosophy, and academics who control university departments and museums have a lot to lose if evolution is proved wrong, which I believe it has been, many times over. But the evolutionists are not going to give up their beliefs just because they are wrong! And they are certainly not going to drop the inaccurate and misleading textbooks in schools and colleges!
I believe the Lord Jesus opened the doors for Dr. Cuozzo to do the original research that no one else had been allowed to do, to see the skulls that no creationist was allowed to handle. And I believe he and his family have been protected, first in France and later when their car was shot at in America. The man who supplied the x-ray equipment was not. His name and address were plastered on the x-ray crates which Dr Cuozzo took to France. Later he was found dead in his house in America in mysterious circumstances, his body covered in hundreds of needle marks. This too is in the book.
The media, to its shame, has examined none of this. It just goes along with evolution philosophy. Where are the programs on Dr [Cuozzo's] book, for example? Who has ever heard of him outside of creationist circles? Why were his adventures in France not on the news? Why were his discoveries not the subject of debate in every university? I had never heard of him until a Christian friend in the USA handed me his book and said, 'You have to read this.' I've now read it, and am passing on the information via this book review.
[End of quote]
The best that I could make of the enigmatic Neanderthals prior to reading this new material was that they may have been the “giants” (Nephilim) of Genesis 6:4: “There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that …”.
The Bible is clear: shortly after the creation, man sinned and became extremely wicked, so wicked that God was sorry He had made man. Then, God caused a great flood, destroying all mankind with the exception of Noah and his family. We are not sure how many souls died in this global flood, but suspect that it was many. A common question is, why is there no fossil evidence of those killed in the flood? There is fossil evidence of dinosaurs, mammoths, fish, vegetation, mosquitoes, and even raindrops, so why not evidence of the humans who died in the flood? The answer to this question is simple and right before us: there is fossil evidence of humans dying in the flood; these humans are what are presently referred to as Neanderthal man; Neanderthal man meets the Biblical criteria for those who died in the flood very nicely.
There is no question that Neanderthal man lived on earth. Many partial skeletons have been found which have provided the scientific community with credible DNA sequences. These sequences reveal a small, but distinct genetic difference between the Neanderthal and modern man; this difference is approximately 1.3 percent in the mitochondrial DNA. If we examine the scriptures in Genesis and join them with the fossil and DNA evidence, we can explain this distinct genetic difference between Neanderthal and modern man.
Looking at the Biblical account of the flood, we find that there were sudden major changes to the environment and ecosystems. The entire earth was flooded which resulted in a change to the atmosphere which, in turn, resulted in a new ecosystem, no longer able to support huge dinosaurs with small nostrils and dragonflies with over 2 foot wingspans. Also, concerning humans, we know they lived much shorter lives after the flood as clearly documented in Genesis chapter 11. And, at the disembarkation from the Ark, God announced that He would allow the eating of meat. All of this leads us to realize that these significant changes would require a genetic reset of DNA. This genetic reset, which was executed by God, Himself, explains the distinct genetic differences between modern man and those before the flood, whom we have concluded are Neanderthals. Neanderthal fossils reveal that Neanderthal had larger brains than modern man, better bone structure, stronger teeth, better bites (occlusion), fewer genetic mutations (disease), and longer lifespan. For references and Neanderthal DNA sequences, see Neanderthal’s Identity.
Accepting Neanderthal man as those living before the flood solves many mysteries such as the following:
1. How did Neanderthal go extinct?
Answer: He died in the flood.
2. Why is there no evidence of pre-flood man?
Answer: There is much evidence of pre-flood man – Neanderthal.
3. Why is Neanderthal genetically distinct from modern man?
Answer: Neanderthal had only the first genetic reset, but Modern man had both the first and second genetic reset. See the technical paper Neanderthal’s Identity for details.
4. Why do we have his (Neanderthal’s) genetic mutations, but he doesn’t have ours (modern man)?
Answer: He is our ancestor. Our mutations were developed after the flood, so we have both Neanderthal and modern mutations; he has only the pre-flood mutations.
5. Why did Neanderthal not interbreed with modern man?
Answer: He couldn’t; Neanderthal and modern man were separated by the flood.
6. Why are Neanderthal’s remains found in so many diverse locations?
Answer: The flood deposited them there.
7. Why is Neanderthal physiologically and anatomically superior?
Answer: His DNA was closer to Adam’s.
8. Where does Neanderthal fit in post-flood Bible genealogy?
Answer: He doesn’t. We know the DNA from the table of nations people (Genesis Chapter 10) and subsequent generations; none has the Neanderthal genetic signature.
Part Two:
Cuozzo’s “The Secret of Bernifal”
“In this chapter we see evidence that Neanderthal man (a true human) lived with dinosaurs and carved pictures of them in caves”.
"The Secret of Bernifal"
"There were four caves on our list that I thought were very important. They were all in the region of Les Eyzies. Les Eyzies is a village at the confluence of the Beune and Vezere Valleys. There is a river in the Vezere Valley and a creek in the Beune Valley, the Petite Beune River. The larger tortuous and twisted Vezere River eventually empties into the much larger Dordogne River. As described in chapter 5, Les Eyzies is the capital of pre-history in France.
In three of these caves we were escorted by tour guides, but when we entered the fourth we examined it closely without any authorities present. The first tree: Rouffignac, 14 km from Les Fyzies; Combarelles, 3 km from Les Byzies; and Font-de-Gaume, 2 km from Les Byzies, all had fees for entrance and tours of the long, selected routes in each cave. There were many public passageways in these first three caves and many that were blocked off to the public.
The standard evolutionary cave propaganda was preached by each of the tour guides in French, whether it was a walking tour or a miniature train tour. If you were a creationist, you needed a very thick skin and a lot of anti-acid medicine for your stomach when you visited these eaves. It also probably would help if you didn’t understand French. Unfortunately, I understood a little, but enough to be uncomfortable on the tours.
The fourth cave or "Grotte," as the French call it, was the very dark and extraordinary Bernifal. Bernifal is 5 km from Les Eyzies and required some real searching to discover its whereabouts. There were no signs in Les Eyzies or outside of town indicating where it was located. The people we asked merely shrugged their shoulders. Some also puffed air out of their mouths, which seems to be almost a French custom when encountering a problem. Finally, we found a couple of friendly souls that were neither shruggers nor puffers and they gave us some rough directions which lead to the general vicinity.
I had previously purchased a small booklet at the Museum of Saint Germainen-Laye which described this cave along with many others. It was a guide book which described the decorated caves "ouvertes au public" (open to the public).(1) It provided some directions which my small hand of "middle and high school French scholars" poured over. The kids provided me with three different interpretations. I concurred with a little of each. There were some similarities, so we built on those and made our way down route D 47.
In another book that I had taken with us, Ann Sieveking describes the important caves of the valley of the Petite Beune River. She says, "Eleven decorated shelters have been found in the valley of the Petite Beune, distributed on either side of the river over a distance of about seven kilometers. Only one of these, Bemifal, is a cave of major importance and it is a deep cave while the majority of the lessor sites are daylit shelters. The shelters will here be described as they occur going upstream from the direction of Les Fyzies. Bemifal is, in fact, the third cave, but its importance allows it to be described first."(2) The guide book mentioned above described the cave as being approximately 5 km from Les Eyzies in the community of Meyrals very near route D 47.
Another problem arose when we looked for this very important cave in the recent Michelin map of the Perigord.(3) We had just purchased it in 1982, but it did not reveal the location of Bernifal, even though it did display all popular grottes (caves) and shelters. The little guide book from the museum was published in 1976 and Sieveking’s book in 1979. Both had spoken about it in detail. It was strange that the Michelin map had completely left it out when it was of major importance. The guidebook advised bringing one’s own light to see Bemifal. While it was open to the public, no light was provided for you to see the walls. I had never heard of a public cave with no lighting. It also said that the floor of the cave was very slippery and you just might fall without a "appui de la main" or cane. That, in itself, is enough to make one suspicious. Open but slippery and dark didn’t sound too inviting to the average tourist.
Apparently these words and omissions fell on deaf ears and some people still came to Bernifal. By the time we arrived in the summer of 1982 a decision was made to close Bemifal to the public. It didn’t make too much sense since the caves are large tourist attractions and therefore sources of revenue. Bemifal was open at least from 1976 to 1979. So, with Bernifal not on the Michelin map, it became almost invisible. All we could conclude was that something was wrong with Bemifal and that tourists were not to be allowed inside anymore. After weighing all the previous knowledge, we became more determined to find it.
Apparently someone else thought that closing the cave was a bad idea, too. Whoever this was unofficially opened it to the public once again. This time the cave was not opened by a bureaucratic government agency, but by someone using a much more rapid method called “the axe or sledge hammer” technique, to bash in the front door. That’s how we found it when we finally located the entrance. However, locating it wasn’t so simple. After driving around a while, we finally spotted the supposedly prominent landmark near the cave described in the guidebook. It was the chateau de Viell-Mouly. At first, we had been baffled in our quest for this landmark. The chateau (castle) was supposed to be on the left side of the road. We went up and down the road several times before deciding that a stone-stucco house on the left side with a small tower-like structure attached to it could actually be called a castle or chateau. Of course we really had to stretch the definition of a castle to match what was really there. It certainly didn’t match any of the other castles we had seen. However, there was a large farm field across the street from the chateau and we noticed a farm house adjacent to the field. This part fit the description. I parked the van on D47 at the end of the field far away from the farm house. A stream wound its way along the edge of the field flowing next to the road. It would be necessary to cross this stream in order to get to the field. Our guidebook said that one should walk across a "valley" after crossing the stream. Looking into the distance we could see the face of a small cliff on the other side of the field. We deducted that the field must be the "valley" and the Remifal cave must be somewhere in the cliff on the other side. Our directions said it should be a ten-minute walk from the road to the cave. We also noticed that there was a large camper van also parked on the same side of the road but closer to the farm house. There were only two parked vehicles on that street.
We proceeded towards the farm house after we noticed that the only bridge across this stream was directly in front of the house. It was a small bridge which had a chain extending from one side of it to the other and a sign hanging from the middle of the chain. It read, "Passage interdite," meaning crossing was forbiden. We didn’t have to get out our pocket French-English dictionary to translate that. Most of us knew what it meant, so we couldn’t plead ignorance. The fact that crossing the bridge was forbidden was clearly meant to keep tourists off the property that belonged to the inhabitants of this farm house. No problem, we thought... we'll just go ask the farmer for permission to cross over the bridge. We were pretty bold, or naive, once again. There on a sunny day in southern France, a daddy, a mommy, and their five children knocked on the door of a farm house for permission to cross over private property when there was a sign saying that you couldn’t cross over.
We knocked, and knocked and knocked but there was no farmer or no Mrs. farmer either. What to do? No one was home. Well, knowing us, by this time you should have guessed that we jumped over the chain and crossed the forbidden bridge. We then were on another adventure.
Across the Battlefield
We crossed the valley like a platoon of soldiers crossing a battlefield. Our eyes were constantly looking in every direction hunting for the dreaded farmer or some farm hand. We tried to stay low but we stood out like tall corn stalks above the vegtables and grass. There was a clear path that we followed through the vegetation that led to the base of the cliff. I didn’t know how we were going to climb this cliff As we pondered that question, someone saw another path looked like it went up a large hill that might take us around the other side of cliff. We started up the new path, and as we climbed higher and higher we came upon a plateau which was heavily wooded. By this time we were out of the sight of the farmhouse and, hopefully, safe. We moved along the path behind the cliff until eventually we found the entrance to a cave. It was nestled among a dense grove of trees, and approachable only by a deep gouge cut into the earth of the hillside. This dug-out lane was 4-6 feet high on either side and not very long. It led right up to the front door.
An amazing fact was the condition of the front door to the cave, as we found it on August 4, 1982. This large, wooden door to the primary entrance was split in half. I solemnly promise all my readers, and the French authorities, that we had no part in the splitting of this door. We entered into the pitch blackness of Bernifal with great caution at 10:30 a.m. It was no shock to find that the floor was very muddy. Walking had to be done with care. We only had four flashlights, and all tried to stay close together It was a very frightening but exciting adventure for all of us. We set up the two oldest boys as a guard at the door to rotate every ten minutes, just so nobody could surprise us.
The temperature outside was about 80 degrees F. but inside the cave it was around 50 degrees F. In our bones, it felt more like 40 degrees F. The cave was over 200 feet deep according to our reports and we found the floor covered with one to two inches of mud (see figure 22). Water dripped down from many places in the ceiling and stalactites from the roof were forming everywhere. There were also many stalagmites rising up from the floor like spikes in various places. These could really put your knee out of joint in a hurry. Sliding in the mud and falling on one of these pointed things could ruin your whole day. I asked the kids if this could be the reason Neanderthals became extinct? How could I find time humor in this situation? Well, with five children, almost anything can be funny.
We were all standing in the first chamber and had just seen a red outline of a mammoth on the left wall when the silence of the darkness was suddenly shattered by voices coming from the depths of the cave. We knew we couldn’t run because we’d all be flat on our face in the mud or impaled on a stalagmite. There was nothing to do but wait and see who it was. Our door guards returned when they heard the noise. We waited in stunned silence.
We all relaxed when we heard the very pleasant sound of a little dog barking along with the voices.
As they approached, I recognized that they were speaking Italian. This was my grandmother and grandfather’s native language. As the voices and the woofing drew nearer we saw a single small light coming at us. They greeted us in Italian. There were three people, two men and a woman. I spoke a little Italian and they spoke a little English. They were from a university in Italy, Turin, I believe. We confirmed the fact that this truly was Bernifal. They had some handwritten notes written in Italian that described the cave in detail. Someone at their university had been in this cave at an earlier date. We exchanged some information, and after this short conversation they said goodbye and exited from the broken front door of the cave. I wondered if they had permission or had done the same thing that we did. They couldn’t have been the ones that split the door because there was no sign of an axe or sledge anywhere around the entrance, and they weren’t carrying one. The big problem was that they were the ones that owned the camper we saw parked near the farmhouse. This was bad news for us.
As they left, they must have encountered the farmer and informed him about our presence in the cave to divert attention away from themselves. He immedi-ately headed for the cave, intending not to go through the front door but to climb down through a secret opening in the ceiling. As the farmer headed towards the cave, armed with a thick walking stick, we went deeper into its bowels. We had no idea that any of this was going on. With some confidence, I relieved the two boys, John, age 16, and Frank, age 13, of their door guard duties so they could accompany us deeper into the cave.
We all held hands as we left chamber one and entered chamber two. It was a downhill slide at this point. Light flashed in all directions. Margie saw a red hand imprint on a wall — obviously red ochre (mixed with animal fat, it became wall paint). She held her hand next to it as I shot a picture
(see figure 23 in color insert section).
A huge claw-like structure appeared suddenly on our right and everyone gasped. It was only a stone formation, but very terrifying. The boys then saw a ladder going up to another level. Daniel and Frank climbed up and said it led to a ledge above one of the walls. They wanted to go further up but I said we should stick together. I had no idea what would await them at the next level up. I kept shooting Hash pictures at anything and everything I thought was important. There had to be something in here, I thought, that was not supposed to be seen. Where was it? We investigated deeper and deeper, seeing less and less as we went and getting the feeling that impending doom was coming upon us. I was starting to get nervous about getting lost in this place and also a vague feeling of danger crept into my being. I thought that we had better turn around and get ready to leave. We had been in there at least 30 to 40 minutes and the damp coldness was beginning to penetrate our bones. I thought if Neanderthalers had lived in this, it’s no wonder that they had arthritis.
As we walked and slid back into room one, I took flash pictures of a carved mammoth head and a very demonic-looking face while shooting the entire wall for completeness
(see figure 25 in color insert section).
Only small spots were illuminated on the walls with the flashlights, so entire wall patterns were difficult to see. In was just on the knife-edge of time that we exited through the broken door, because within about a minute right behind us appeared the farmer with his thick stick coming out of the same door. He yelled at us in French, saying the cave was closed (ferme), passage was interdite and we shouldn’t have crossed his bridge. He caught up to us quickly while brandishing the large staff. He seemed anxious to know what we saw in the cave. He also asked if we were picking champignons (mushrooms). I said no, we weren’t picking champignons but we were in the cave. I showed him my guidebook which stated that this cave was open (ouvert) to the public. He kept insisting it wasn’t open and he was getting angry. I gave a quick motion signal to my team and we all started a very fast walk down the path knowing that he probably couldn’t keep up with us. We kept going faster and faster until finally we were running as he followed closely behind. We sprinted across the field and splashed through the stream heading directly towards the van. We jumped in the van, slammed the doors, and sped away while it appeared as if he was writing down our license plate. We headed back to Brive at a normal speed so as not to call any attention to ourselves, while all the time praying that we wouldn’t be reported to the police. We got back to the hotel unharmed, and miraculously, unreported.
Dinosaurs
One of the last things an evolutionist will ever admit or believe is that Paleolithic man or woman saw a live dinosaur. This simply will not do. According to their theories, the age of man did not begin until some 2.5-3 million year ago with his predecessors in Africa, and certainly, they believe the men who decorated this cave existed within the last 200,000 years, most likely within the last 30,000 years. Dinosaurs, on the other hand died out at least 65 million year ago. This, to them, is fact.
Every cave that we visited and every decorated cave that the public is allowed to tour will "mammal" you to death. I mean all they will show you are mammals. This doesn’t mean that down some other passageway reptiles can’t be found. Where they take you there are no drawings or carvings of reptiles. It’s as reptiles never existed. We know that this is not true because we still have reptiles today. Snakes, lizards, turtles, alligators, and tuataras are all part of our modern fauna, but conspicuously absent from cave drawings. The cave painters and engravers surely had reptiles in their age. Where were they? More specifically, we must make direct inquiry about cave evidence concerning the existence of those "terrible lizards" or dinosaurs. Are there dinosaurs depicted on cave walls?
Serpent Biting a heel
Reptiles are not absent in the Paleolithic study of "portable art." Portable art means just that. These are artworks constructed by human hands that can be car-ried around from place to place as opposed to "fixed" mural art on cave walls. The term "portable art" in the prehistoric era usually refers to artwork carved on the surface of bones or pieces of stone.
Alexander Marshak of Harvard University is a specialist in this subject with many years of first-hand study of original objects. In his book entitled The Roots of Civilization, he shows a detailed bone carving found in La Madeleine, France (Dordogne region), that displays a clear representation of a serpent.(4) It is this site, La Madeleine, that gave its name to the Magdalenian period of human existence in France.(5) During this period Neanderthals were no longer supposed to be alive and more modern-looking, or Cro-Magnon peoples, populated South-ern France.(6)
The serpent artifact found in La Madeleine was mysterious according to Marshak. The etchings were made on a long round bone with precision-type in-struments.(7) This bony scene is presented by the author in its unrolled form, as if it were on a scroll. The drawing shows a man-like figure caffying a stick with twigs or leaves on it and two horse heads facing in the opposite direction. To us, the interesting part concerns the figure of an upside-down legless serpent or snake that appears poised to take a bite out of the lower-half of the man’s right leg. Its mouth is not open but it is only inches away from the flesh. Of course, Marshak did not recognize in print its resemblance to the prophecy from Genesis, "He will crush your head and you will strike His heel" (Gen. 3:15).(8)
Microscopic Carvings
Much of Marshak’s studies had to be conducted under the microscope to properly visualize the inscriptions and drawings. Did these early people carve these engravings with a magnifying glass or microscope? I’m sure that they did not. There is one big question that now arises: How could the ancient artists see with their eyes what we cannot see today without magnification?
I had spoken at ATT Bell Labs in 1995 and just touched on this subject briefly. After my talk someone asked me if I knew about the ancient use of "cow lenses." I said that I had never heard of this subject. He told me that on a tour of a cave in Europe a tour guide had said that early peoples had actually torn out the lens from a cow’s eye and stuck it on their own eye so they could magnify ob-jects. There are no limits to the stories tour guides can dream up in their heads for the sake of an evolutionary explanation. I told him that I didn’t think it would work. I think that if you stick a cow lens over your eye that you had better have good vision in the other eye, because that’s the only one that you will be seeing out of. Besides that, all the possible allergic reactions make the experiment seem doomed to failure.
The CONFRONTATION
One of the amazing things that happened inside the Bemifal Cave was that in the process of shooting pictures in all directions, I took a picture of an actual dinosaur carving. This could be the very reason why Bemifal was suddenly closed to the public when the creation movement of the seventies and eighties started to gain public acceptance. No dinosaurs ever existed with man, they said; therefore, no paintings and no carvings. The other caves must be neatly cordoned off so that no unjaundiced eye ever sees a reptile figure on a wall. We were never supposed to see this. It was mainly carved into the rock with only a little dab of paint on it, therefore not easy to see, especially with flashlights.
My photograph entitled "The Confrontation" in figure 24 actually shows a dinosaur-like creature in head-to-head combat with a mammoth. This, I believe, is the first time that this carving has ever been revealed to the public. These images were carved into the walls using some of the natural configurations of the limestone as part of the anatomy. What type of dinosaur is this? The diagram of this confrontation is seen in figure 24a.
First of all it had small front limbs. It had a vertical eye slot, meaning the eye was longer in its vertical dimension than it was in its horizontal dimension. The snout in front of the eye looks to be somewhat hollowed out as if the bone in that place was concave. No large teeth protruded from either jaw but what looks like small teeth were in either the upper or lower jaw. It had a large upper jaw and a smaller lower jaw. There is a nostril opening at the front of the snout. Under the eye, the mouth line extends parallel to the top of the snout and becomes a line of muscle in the neck when it reaches a point beyond the eye, making an approximately 120-degree angle turn and travels down the short neck to the intersection between the right limb and the neck. The claws have been broken off on this right limb. Both elbows are visible. The left limb is held in the same position with a rounded paw area.
What Kind is it?
There are two great orders of dinosaurs: the Saurischia (lizard-hipped) and the Ornithischia (bird-hipped). This division is based on the structure of the pelvis (hip). We can’t see the pelvic (hip) structure in this sculpture so we have to classify it by some other means.
In the Saurischian dinosaurs the teeth of the jaws are set into the margins or only in the front. In this specimen, there are what appear to be teeth along the one side towards the front part of the snout, but not much is seen in the front of the snout. Ornithischia tended to be herbivorous while the Saurischians were car-nivorous. This dinosaur is in a combative stance. Carnivores tend to be combat-ive, but some herbivores are also combative. However, only Saurischians had a hollowed area in front of the eye. We may also infer from the short upper limbs that this was a bipedal dinosaur (walked on two hind legs).
From these features it seems possible to tentatively classify this dinosaur sculpture into the suborder Theropoda. These Saurischian creatures were almost exclusively carnivorous, bipedal, with strong hind legs and small forelimbs. They supposedly flourished during the entire Mesozoic era (230 to 62 million years ago). To go any further would be pure guesswork. To say it was a Teratosauris, Allosauris. Acrocanthosauris, or such would not be possible, given the limited data. However, to be very forthright, it must be stated that this is a dinosaur, period. How did this happen to get on the Bernifal wall?
Before we compose any theories on the dinosaur appearance, let’s take a look at the mammoth. Mammoths or Elaphas primigenius remains have been found in the excavations in France at Cro-Magnon, La Quina, and La Roches .(9) Drawings and engravings of them have been found in numerous caves such as Rouffignae, La Baume Latrone,(10) Pech-Merle, Pair-non-Pair, Bernifal, Font-de-Gaume, and Combarelles." The red outline of the mammoth or Elaphas primigenius seen in figure 25 (color insert section) is on the wall in the Bernifal cave below the "Confrontation:" This red mammoth was noted by Ann Sieveking.’(2) It corresponds well with the one carved in the "Confrontation." These mammoths had small ears in contrast to the African elephant of recent times and had a lump of fat on the top of its head, which gave it the characteristic bump-on-the-head look.
Regardless of whether this sculpture was done in the Upper or Middle Paleolithic, by either Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon, Magdelaine, or Gravettian people, it was still accomplished by a human. This human either saw a dinosaur and mammoth in battle or had a portable piece of artwork that contained this piece of information and had been handed down for several generations. Because I believe that we have rather good evidence for these caves being post-flood caves and for post-flood burials in other caves, I believe that the latter is true. It was accomplished by a person who had a piece of portable art, but a human saw it happen.
One other possibility exists and that is the post-Hood existence of both dinosaurs and mammoths originating from the ark. They both could have come off together, but because of unsuitable environmental conditions the dinosaurs became extinct while the mammoth and other mammals adapted to the harsher atmospheric and terrestrial surroundings. The post-flood conditions would not favor the preservation of dinosaur skeletons or any skeletons, for that matter. Deep, rapid burial and compaction of mud flows following the flood are ideal circumstances for the making and preserving of animal bones. Consequently, we would expect that there would be very few post-flood dinosaur fossils compared to pre-flood dinosaur fossils.
Red Ochre Again
In figure 25 in the color insert section there is the red mammoth and there is also the red hand print on another wall (figure 23 in the color insert section). These undoubtedly are red ochre. Supposedly. all the cave paintings in the Upper Paleolithic made use of this material.(3) What is important is that here is this red substance again. The same kind of material used on La Ferrassie I and Pech del’ Aze in their burial custom. This wall paint was probably red ochre mixed with animal fat. It seems to allow the time frame of this cave to be in a Neanderthal period.
Keeping the red ochre and the dinosaur carving in mind, we must ask how does this fit in the modern scientific view of history? It really doesn’t fit at all because the dinosaur eliminates approximately 62-65 million years and makes man, dinosaur, and mammoth (a mammal) contemporaries.’(4) The red ochre on the same cave walls as a dinosaur throws all the timetables off. No wonder the cave was closed.
Also, one very important question should be raised regarding the information of Bernifal artwork. If these fossils are truly found in different layers of sedimentation, do the layers represent time or geographic separation. I believe the artist of Bernifal was trying to demonstrate that these animals were mortal enemies, that they fought, and because of this they lived in distant ecological niches.(15) Therefore, the layers could merely represent isolated burial sites due to the independent pre-flood habitats of these creatures, and have nothing to do with gaps in time.
Today Modern scientists refer to some of these habitats as eras or periods. The Mesozoic Era is suppposedly the age of reptiles which lasted approximately 120 to 165 million years with its Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods.(16) The Early epochs of the Cenozoic Era, the age of mammals, are the Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, and Pliocene, and so on. These separate layers could very well be only widely dispersed ecological habitats. We are now, supposedly, in the later stages of the Cenozoic Era. There is no question that some layering of sediment takes place over time - just dig down in any historical site. However, it is quite different to say that time is the only factor represented by sedimentation.
A few years ago in our yard at home we dug down around three feet in our garden on the south side of the house and unearthed an early - 1800 garbage pit. There were all sorts of broken pieces of china and strange-shaped bottles, high top leather boots, an old cabinet lock which was part gold, molten glass that had hardened on pieces of coal, plus many other broken artifacts of the 1800s. There were dates on the bottles. Obviously, this was a pit to discard unwanted items. Garbage pits like this are also found in restored Colonial villages like Williamsburg, Virginia.
A question that can be posed regarding this type of discovery is this: How does one know when digging down into so-called occupational levels of prehistoric caves he is not just excavating a garbage pit?
A Very Natural Selection
At the risk of redundancy I would like to emphasize the process of "natural selection" when evolutionists come upon evidence such as the "Confrontation;" They naturally select only the evidence they want you to see. I offer the following letter as evidence. It was received by me in October of 1982 after I submitted the "Confrontation" photo to Science News. I was hoping for a scientific breakthrough, but all [I] received was this:
SCIENCE NEWS
I. Street NW, Washington DC 20036 (202) 785-2255
Oct. 6, 1982
Dear Dr. Cuozzo: As I told you on the phone the other day, we appreciated the opportunity to look at your photo. Unfortunately, it’s not something we can use in the magazine - while I have no doubt that the images are there, both the editor and I don’t think it would be clear when reproduced in the magazine. In addition, we need comments from an expert or two in the field who had seen it, which doesn’t seem possible in this case.
I wish you the best of luck with your picture, and once again thank you for giving us the opportunity to look at it.
Sincerely,
Assistant to the Editor
If you will note carefully, the letter said that they would need comments from an expert or two in the field who has seen it. However, that was impossible. Why? First of all, the cave had probably been sealed up like a can of Campbell’s soup. Secondly, without a will there is no way.
Is it because no one has seen it, no one will admit to seeing it, or no one will dare go to see it? I think the latter two reasons are the most plausible. What we are dealing with is a monolithic structure in modern science where there is absolutely no evidence which could possibly shed some doubt on the evolutionary interpretation of life. According to them, it just doesn’t exist. And if it did exist, it wouldn’t be scientific. Therefore, why go see it? But she did say she had no doubt that the images were there. As I write this a number of years later, I can almost guarantee that those images don’t exist anymore, or at least a padlocked steel door has replaced the broken wooden one.
Font-De-Gaume, Clean Caves and Time
It seems that ever since modem men first discovered the painted caves that they have been deteriorating. Caves like Font-de-Gaume, Combarelles, and Lascaux had white walls(7) before the tourists came. These caves are not small.
We visited Font-de-Gaume officially. We stood in a long line, paid our fees, and had a guided tour. Font-de-Gaume is over 123 meters deep, with smaller sections 15, 21, and 48 meters. Most of the artwork in this cave starts at about 60 meters from the entrance. There are about 200 animals separated into about 25 tourist stops along the route through the cave. If we are to be perceptive, “wise as serpents” (Matt. 10:16), we must be careful to observe everything when going through this cave and notice the darkened walls from about just 50 years of being open to the public. They were really dark gray and made the atmosphere rather dismal.
But this fact leads to a mystery. Ann Sieveking states, "In less than half a century of public visiting the walls of Font-de-Gaume have been changed from white to deep gray by the smoke of carbide lamps but although we think its pe-riod of use in the Paleolithic covered many thousands of years it was not dirty when first rediscovered in the twentieth century; nor was Lascaux, nor Ekain in the Basque province of Guipuzcoa, both of which are caves that still have a beau-tiful white crystalline surface:"(8) These caves, when first discovered, had white crystalline walls. Thousands of years of use and white crystalline walls, is that a contradiction or not? Please note this fact well. It really disputes thousands of years of cave use by prehistoric peoples.
Gowleti states, "Lamps were indispensable for working in dark caves, and these have been found at Lascaux and elsewhere. They were simple carved stone bowls, in which animal fats would have been burnt with a wick."(9) He forgot to add that it was probably "smokeless fat" that they were using. Notice here the beginning of a real made-up story to cover up a mystery. If this were true, we could all get rid of our exhaust fans over our stoves. I would imagine that the evolutionist would define smokeless fat as sort of like decaffeinated coffee.
Ann Sieveking admits the use of stone lamps at Lascaux but contradicts Gowlett when she states, "We know virtually nothing about the use of the deep caves, except that use hardly appears to have been made of them at all. There are no traces of big fires to light the galleries by, no blackening smoke or soot stains on the roof and almost no possessions left lying about."(21) How many times did the inhabitants or artists of these caves go in and out with their smoking torches or lamps that left no smoke marks on the walls or ceilings? How could drawings, carvings, and so forth, deep in dark, cold (50 degrees F) tunnels under the ground be accomplished without much light?
Could they have used giant fireflies? The facts don’t add up. Light for these people meant fire. This was post-flood Europe. Fire means smoke. Could these cave artworks have been accomplished without modern type light? How? Surely there were not 50 to 80 thousands of years of use of these caves. Could the artists in these caves possibly have had better eyesight than modern man? Perhaps with some an infrared type of capability?
The Rouffignac Refrigerator
Rouffignac Cave is called the cave of 100 mammoths. It is about 7 km north of Les Ezies and, according to the official guidebook, it "runs back for seven miles."(21) Engravings and drawings are found all over the cave. I wonder how dark it was at seven miles down when the artists went in many years ago. We went through this cave on a little open tourist train. It was like a kiddy ride at the amusement park. The Rouffignac train ride went along a few miles of well-lit track and was really a cold ride. It was so cold at its depths that I saw some real ice sitting on a ledge over numerous mammoth drawings. When I saw the mam-moth drawings and the ice together, my first thought was that we were in an enormous "ancient meatlocker" I think mammoth meat would have stored pretty well, if not frozen in some locations in the "meatlocker." It could also have served as a refrigerator for our ancient relatives.
Dancing in the Dark
Recent explorations have been conducted in a cave in Bruniquel, Southern France. We didn’t see this cave firsthand, but over the past six years the depths of the cave have been investigated by archaeological teams led by a number of French archeologists. They said the occupation levels of this deep cave could be 47,600 years old or much older. This is their way of saying it wasn’t recent. One of the archaeologists, a Francois Rouzaud, said that Bruniquel cave, "shows that pre-historic men frequented the deep underground world, in total darkness, long before they began to paint on cave walls."(22) Men and women walked around in total darkness. Can you picture that? With all the stalactites hanging from the ceilings and stalagmites protruding from the floor, I can say that this is absolutely impossible without light or sonar. I know we are not related to dolphins, so there are only two choices left. Better vision in the dark or lights. That’s it. The Bernifal cave would have hospitalized us all without light. I don’t know which would have been worse, a stalactite in the head or a stalagmite in the knee.
Burnt bones were also found in the depths of Bruniquel, which meant whoever was in there cooked their food. However, burning fires in a cave over 300 meters from the surface would fill the cave with smoke and deplete all the avail-able oxygen, unless it were vented. The archaeologists did not provide any evi-dence to prove that the cave had a source of air at these great depths. Cooked mammoth steaks, therefore, could have been brought into the dark depths of the cave for non-candlelight romantic dinners for two.
Picture this scene: Two sets of infrared human eyes stare at each other in total darkness in the depths of the Bruniquel Neanderthal Cafe. They suddenly realize that in the future, as their genes go silent, candlelight might have to be used to spoil the cozy atmosphere and eat up the limited oxygen in the cafe. A small stalactite quartet starts playing guess what? You’re right, the strains of "Dancing in the Dark" come wafting out of the opening in the ground as the mammoths gather around the cave entrance swinging to the music from below, although they’re not too happy about the aroma of their "charcoal-broiled" Uncle Mammu, no relation to Shamu. it was the middle stone age but no one had ever heard of "rock music." That was to come with more genetic breakdown in the so-called advanced society of the future. Now, back to reality.
Many consider these art works to have a religious significance, and if so, they have to be able to account for the coming and going of Paleolithic peoples for over thousands of years and no apparent damage to the walls except for some graffiti. There is one theory that none of the evolutionist authors will touch and that is that these cave paintings may show and tell some stories that the evolutionists are unwilling to see or listen to. Jesus asked, "Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear?" (Mark 8:18).
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